Reading BookShare books on an iPad

By treky fan, 2 November, 2021

Forum
iOS and iPadOS

First off, let me start by saying sorry if this has been posted here before. My brailleaense is getting harder to us with the braille display of the unit seeming to get worse every time I try to turn it on. I used the braillesense for everything, from writing documents, to reading books. And while I've found a solution to writing documents using my IPad, but I haven't been able to find a solution that will let me read books from bookshare. I've tried voice dream reader, but I don't like to have the book read out all in one chunk. I prefer to swipe threw the book and read it in smaller chunks. If somebody could give me any tips on what apss I can use to read books, I'd appreciate it.

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Comments

By Blind angel 444 on Wednesday, November 24, 2021 - 13:24

Dolphin Easy Reader or Easy Reader on the App Store.
I read that it has many options built in. I hope this is the answer to your problem.

By Maldalain on Wednesday, November 24, 2021 - 13:24

In visual Settingsin the Voice Dream app, you can change the view mode from Plain text to either Rich Text Format or Original depending on file type. This will significantly enhance your reading experience with the app. Also EasyReader is great in viewing content.

I have not tried easy reader, but I will check it out. What file formats are best to use with it? When I download books, I have them download in brf, or braille ready format.

By TJT 2001 on Wednesday, November 24, 2021 - 13:24

I suggest using Bookshare web reader. You may need to load the desktop version of the website. A limitation is that you cannot use three fingers to scroll.

It doesn't remember your place, but normally one chapter of a book is presented on each screen, and there's a table of contents button that lets you move between the pages. And within each chapter of a book, you can normally navigate by headings to move between subsections.

Since you'd like to read one paragraph at a time, I highly recommend that you try this option.

By KE8UPE on Wednesday, November 24, 2021 - 13:24

Hi,

Apple Books can read certain formats of bookshare books, such as epub.
To try it:
1. Using safari, go to bookshare.org & login
2. Search for the book of your choice & click the link.
3. Next, if you see something that says, “open in”, click that, & it will bring up the regular share sheet.
4. On this menu, find & double-tap, “books” & you should be all set

It’s been a while since I’ve done this process myself, so I sincerely apologize if any of the above directions are in accurate. If they are, anyone can feel free to correct me

By Deborah Armstrong on Saturday, September 24, 2022 - 13:24

When you download a book from bookshare, you have to set your default to Epub. Epub in fact is the format most publishers deliver the book to bookshare in, so you get everything the original publisher sent to bookshare, like images. Even if you don't care, they are there in case you need someone to describe one or you want to magnify one if you have some vision.
There's a drop down list when you download from bookshare, and its last choice is to set your preferences. I too prefer to read my bookshare books as epub in Apple's native books app. It has great speech and Braille support so I can easily switch between using speech or Braille and put in a bookmark whenever I want to stop reading.

By Lily Rose on Saturday, September 24, 2022 - 13:24

I mostly use EPUB and DAISY Text options in EasyReader. You can also upload docx files and the uploading process goes relatively smoothly, considering some of the difficulties I've had in the past with "Can't upload this file because it doesn't have a DAISY chip" or something like that, but then you get a lot of split words and a bunch of blank cells on the display. So yeah I think EPUB files are the best.